3D Printing at Calgary Protospace

3D Printing is rapidly becoming a gateway drug to the world of making, so I wanted to share a guided tour of the 3D printing facilities available to you at Protospace here in Calgary …

Let’s start with the 3D printing room itself.

Dedicated 3D Printing Room

3d printing room at Calgary Protospace

Having a dedicated, well ventilated, 3D printing room is a reason you might want to use the facilities even if you own your own 3d printer. Some 3d printing filament can be, well, stinky. Having this forced air ventilation, plus the expertise of the Protospace community around you, can be a real boon. As you can see, there’s a viewing window so you can monitor your prints from the outside, as well as seating and benching inside.

3D Printers

We have a selection of 3D printers at Protospace. Some are permanent residents, others are on long term loan, and others come and go. The mainstays are our Ordbot Hadron printers, generously built, maintained and donated by Alan Ferguson. Starting with one, the collection has now grown to three, and the machines have proven to be incredibly robust. The latest two have high end E3D extruders/Filament Feeders, and they all have legit E3D hot ends, the newer machines having E3D v6.

Protospace 3d printers

As you can see in the picture above, we also have a Prusa MD Prusa i3 style printer, which runs 3mm ABS filament. Also featured is Rene’s Monoprice Select IIIP (a rebadged Wanhao Di3) that comes and goes as needed. Chris has also loaned us his Makerbot replicator clone with duel extruders.